Hairloom Tomato

Some farmers are growing tomatoes of heirloom kind in their vegetable garden. Heirloom tomatos varieties are those tomato varieties which are maintained by the gardeners through open pollination. Vegetable gardeners, tomato breeding station, gene bank and vegetable seed producing company maintain the heirloom tomato seeds generation to generation either in vegetable garden or in breeding station or seed producing company. We can call heirloom tomato as the heirloom tomato variety, or heirloom tomato strain, or heirloom tomato landrace, or heirloom tomato race or heirloom tomato lines or heritage tomato variety. Nowadays, some vegetable seeds companies have advertised the importance of heirloom tomato seeds. They note that there are several advantages of growing tomatoes of heirloom tomato types.

The heirloom tomato is so called since the seeds are transmitted from generation to generation in a family without Mendelian breeding method. Heirloom tomatoes are reservoirs of very valuable genes to improve the currently cultivated tomatoes with the improved traits of fruit quality, disease resistance, insect resistance and tolerance to stresses for cold and heat. Nowadays several seed producing companies have been maintaining the landraces of heirloom tomato as useful and valuable gene stock for the improvement of cultivated tomato cultivars. In other words, the heirloom tomato is the gold mine for tomato breeders since the heirloom tomato is rich reservoir of many useful genes to improve the modern tomato varieties. Besides, the most important thing is that the interests of growing tomatoes of heirloom kind are spreading among the people in the developed countries in the USA and Europe.

The heirloom tomato has been passing from one generation to the next generations. The heirloom tomato variety is at least fifty years old. There are several types of heirloom tomato based on their taste and flavor, fruit size, growing pattern and several other traits. The gardeners are growing tomatoes of heirloom kind in their vegetable garden and consuming in a variety of tomato recipe.

The heirloom tomato scientists have modified the real concept of heirloom tomato. They have classified that there are some kinds of heirloom tomato which are developed through hybridization between two different heirloom tomato strains. The heirloom tomato scientists have developed hybrid tomato by crossing between two different strains of heirloom tomato. They still call the hybrid tomato as heirloom tomato hybrid. They are attracted towards growing tomatoes of the heirloom tomato hybrid type since the fruits are sweeter than the commercial large size open pollinated and hybrid tomato varieties. Some farmers have already started growing tomatoes of the heirloom tomato hybrid kind in their vegetable garden.

There is a conflict that heirloom tomato does not have pedigree record and there is no record who developed it. It is believed that heirloom tomato also evolved by spontaneous hybridization between two strains of heirloom tomato and this way there were several kinds of natural heirloom tomato hybrids. Again there were spontaneous hybridization between several heirloom tomato hybrids in the nature and natural selection too occurred. This way there have been evolved diverse strains of heirloom tomato which still need exploration, collection and characterization.

 In addition to these natural phenomena, there were a lot of exchanges of genetic material during gamete formation. Several trait determining factors too independently have been transmitting generation to generation during the gamete formation. There is still another phenomenon which is occurrence of random union of male and female gametes. These all phenomena produced a diverse population of heirloom tomato. There is still another phenomenon which is called mutation. Mutation changes the genetic material structurally and causes corresponding change in the traits. Such change also causes the origin of new heirloom tomato.

But, scientists have declared that they have developed heirloom tomato hybrid combining two strains of heirloom tomato. Another most important thing is that there is no record who developed a particular heirloom tomato. But, tomato breeders have that they have engineered heirloom tomato hybrid crossing between any two strains of heirloom tomato. In their effort they called the hybrid tomato as a valid heirloom tomato hybrid variety. Some tomato scientists have noted that the size of the fruits of heirloom tomato varies from pea size to as large as the size of watermelon.

Some gardeners have already started growing tomatoes of the heirloom kind for their own home consumption. When you learn that some heirloom tomato is of the size of watermelon, you might be interested in growing tomatoes of so large fruit size heirloom tomato. You can find the seeds of such type of heirloom tomato. There are some vegetable seed producing companies that they are producing and selling the seeds of heirloom tomato. You can contact them.

I like to classify the strains of heirloom tomato as natural heirloom tomato and synthetic heirloom tomato. Synthetic heirloom tomato is produced by human effort crossing two strains of heirloom tomato and letting the hybrid for self-pollination and open pollination. After successive open pollination up to seven or more generations, several lines stable heirloom tomato will form.

If heirloom tomato scientists want to classify the heirloom tomato varieties, they must clarify the logical scientific explanation for the classification. Some people are growing tomatoes of synthetic hybrid heirloom tomato whereas some are growing natural heirloom tomato. The ripened color of the heirloom tomato fruit verities from yellow to dark red color like the color of modern commercial cultivars.

Name of the heirloom tomato has generally been given based on the location from where the heirloom tomato seeds were collected and person who collected the heirloom tomato seeds. Every country has a number of heirloom tomato strains. The local farmers are growing tomato seeds of heirloom tomato in their vegetable garden. The gardeners cannot succeed in growing tomatoes of heirloom varieties for commercial production in developed countries where labor is expensive. It is only for home consumption. It is because growing tomatoes of the heirloom seeds requires vigorous and rigorous pruning and training. The training, pruning and harvesting for growing tomatoes of heirloom tomato require a lot of labors since heirloom tomato varieties have generally many fruits.

On the other hand, there is another type of farmers that they are shifting towards growing tomatoes of organic type such as heirloom tomato in organic soils with organic farming method. Some want to start growing tomatoes of hybrid cultivars with no use of harmful insecticide. Tomato consumers are also interested to consume the tomatoes grown organically without the use of dangerous insecticides, but the organic tomatoes grown in organic vegetable garden are more expensive than the tomato fruit harvest from growing tomatoes in inorganic vegetable garden.

Generally heirloom tomato does not loose its vigor and fruit yielding potentiality generation after generation. Farmers can collect seeds from heirloom tomato fruits if the seeds are produced by open pollination or self-pollination. They can protect the seeds and sow the seeds of heirloom tomato when the season comes for growing tomatoes. Thus, the collected seeds will perform almost equally if sowing management is done exactly in the same way as the previous year.

Once the selected open pollinated heirloom tomato has adjusted in your vegetable garden or locality, it will generally continue yielding similarly in the vegetable garden every year. One of the most important things to understand about the heirloom tomato variety of open pollinated type is that it does not lose the original traits generation to generation; but, open pollinated seeds extracted from the commercially cultivated hybrid tomato varieties lose its vegetative, fruit yielding potentiality, disease resistance and many other useful traits. Some organic vegetable gardeners prefer to continue growing tomatoes of heirloom tomato.

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